New Horizons

How's Mexico? That's a question I'm planning on getting asked a lot in the coming week when I'm at home packing some more things to bring down here, and heading to some gaming events that are within a week of each other.

Mexico has been phenomenal. I can only say that it is the reason that I've developed a new attitude towards life, and namely my career. As anyone who has read this before will already know, I was pretty unhappy with my teaching job in Japan. Originally, Christian was going to come and live with me in Japan upon completing her degree in May, but things happened and she wasn't able to join me. I decided to get out of the increasingly bad situation and move to Mexico. I didn't (and still don't really) speak Spanish, and I had only visited for 2 weeks previously.

I also moved down here with no thought as to what I would be doing for a job. After I stopped freaking out over the fact that I have no real job lined up, I started looking at any opportunities I might have that I had never really taken seriously in Japan. I still have my job as editor of StarCityVs.com, and dove into that as much as possible. I started organizing everything that I hade been putting on hold for months that needed to be addressed. I also paid $75 to join a big Freelance site, Guru, but would recommend against it to anyone thinking the same thing. I still haven't found any worthwhile jobs on there that pay more than the equivalent of minimum wage, or often less. As such, I decided to examine the possibilities of doing more freelancing work with gaming companies.



The picture above is me (at the table in the background) doing feature match covaperage at a recent Pro Circuit for Vs. I went to Indianapolis last the weekend of August 11-13, and worked like crazy for three days. It seems like the opportunities in the industry are something I can really take advantage of, and combined with the low cost of living here in Mexico, I think I may have found something I truly want to make a career out of. I contacts and resume are growing by the day, so hopefully I should be making a good amount of money off of this in the near future.

While previously my experience was limited to writing about Vs., I've started looking at other games that are coming out. One of them, Dreamblade, is a great game that is being released with the support of professional level tournaments right from the start - something very important to the marketability of a game. I've been talking with the company to get some work from them, and hopefully will be showing off my stuff next weekend in Atlanta at a $10K tournament that is being held there. I'm going to start off playing in the tournament, and assuming I don't do well, I'll write some articles for their event coverage after I'm done playing. If I do well, I make money and earn a reputation regardless, so it's a win-win situation I think.

On that note, I'll let everyone go as I get back to work. The hard work I've been doing over the past month and a half seems to be paying off, so there's no reason to let up now! I would say I'll be back with a post tomorrow, but one thing I obviously need to do is stop making broken promises at the end of my entries. I always seem to promise new posts within a day, and a day turns into twenty. Therefore, I'm going to tell you right now that you're not going to get anything more out of me for another three weeks! See, now if I miraculously get on here and post something, you'll be pleasantly surprised!

No Eres Feo, Tienes Personalidad

For those of you who aren't Spanish-inclined, this post's title means "You're not ugly, you have personality." I saw it on a Coca Cola billboard while on the way into Cancun after our trip to Christian's hometown several weeks ago. Ever since, I've been looking for all the other Coca Cola ads that have different sayings on them. The best one to date has to be, "Smile, You're In Cancun!" While not funny in and of itself, it's funny when you think that we saw it on the back of the bus in front of us while riding on a croweded, hot, sweaty bus in the less-than-touristy side of Cancun. Now that's a cultural experience for you!

After about a month here, the melancholy and negativity that sank its claws into me in Japan have finally started to loosen their grip. It was difficult at first, as I told Christian, I had become so used to living by myself, that even though I was happy to be with her again, it required a bit of adjustment from the months of learning to deal with loneliness by getting used to living alone. Re-adjusting proved to be a bit of a chore, but luckily I have a patient fiance.

Over the past few weeks, I've been noticing that I'm missing just about every useful cord or cable that I need for all my electroic needs on a daily basis. When we went to Dziuche(Chris's home town), I let the kids play my video games until the batteries on both my portable systems were completely drained. I went up to the roof the other day and took some pictures of the skyline from the roof of the house we're staying in, only to come down and realize that I don't have my USB cord for my camera either. I managed to get a decent shot with my cell phone I brought back from Japan, which captures the neighborhood we're living in pretty well I think:



And while I'm at it, here's a picture of Christian with her little sister, little brother, and aunt:



I'm going to be in the states again next week, but I'll talk about that more in the next post, which will hopefully happen tomorrow!